With Marvel’s The Avengers getting set to hit theaters on May 4th, Marvel Studios is moving forward with plans for the next two years. They’ve got Iron Man 3 scheduled for a May 3, 2013 release and, according to ComicBook.com, filming will likely start the first week of May for the third installment (presumably after Robert Downey Jr.’s publicity tour for “Avengers”).

Multiple sources have told ComicBook.com that shooting for Iron Man 3 will begin prior to The Avengers hitting theaters May 4th, weeks ahead of previously published dates. The film is scheduled to be shot in Wilmington, NC at the EUE/Screen Gems Studios and is believed to be the largest production ever to be filmed in North Carolina.

Previous reports have listed late May as the official production start date, but one source close to the North Carolina operations said that Marvel “will have staff in Wilmington as early as mid-March, with shooting scheduled to begin the last week of April or the first week of May.”

Asked to verify the report, Marvel Studios said they do not officially comment on current or future development but indicated the reports were likely accurate. An e-mail update from that same Marvel Studios source told ComicBook.com, “It is not April for sure.”

Marvel Studios also has Thor 2 scheduled for November 15, 2013, but after that things get a little bit more vague. We know that the company has set release dates for two untitled projects on April 4, 2014 and then on May 16, 2014. With the first date being 4/4/14, one project that comes to mind is the Fantastic Four reboot, though that is still a Twentieth Century Fox release. So perhaps it could be Dr. Strange instead? Fanshare has the following bit on that project:

It has been confirmed that the script for Doctor Strange has been completed by Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer (Conan The Barbarian, Sahara) and Marvel Studios are now actively seeking a director to come in and helm the project. Once the director has come on board, they will then be searching for the cast to star in Doctor Strange.

The budget for Doctor Strange is not expected to be anywhere near as much as that of the bigger Marvel movies but it is still believed that, with the right script, the right director and the right cast, a good superhero movie could definitely come out of this. Production on Doctor Strange is expected to begin this year, with a release date likely to be sometime in 2013.

We think production might start a little later, however, since Neal McDonough dropped the following bits at IMDb about Captain America 2, which could be that May 16, 2014 project:

“Yeah, they’re planning (to go into production for) Captain America 2 for the end of this year, because Marvel does one film at a time. So they’re going to do Thor 2 and as soon as Thor has wrapped, they’ll do Cap 2. Hopefully right after that, we’ll jump into Nick Fury because that’s the one I’m looking forward to more than anything.”

…And I just pray that they have a 1970s setting, because I want to see Sam Jackson with lambchops kicking people’s asses for Marvel universe. It would just be awesome. And to work with Sam would be a treat. We’ve become friendly over the years.”

We’ll have to wait on confirmation on all of this, but it sounds like Marvel Studios is still carefully planning out the upcoming years.